Tom stretched his face up to the sunshine, like a bear emerging from a long winter.

He felt a brush on his shoulder and opened his eyes to see Halo sit down beside him. ‘What did she say?’ asked Tom.

‘You come near Lucia, she’ll kill you.’

‘Shit! Did you tell her I pulled her daughter out of the goddamn plane?’

‘Yup. She didn’t believe me. Then said she didn’t care anyway, said Lucia wouldn’t have been on the plane if it wasn’t for you.’

‘Did you tell her— Oh, fuck it.’ Tom waved away his own argument as he realized Mrs Holmes held the over-card every time: Lucia would be fine and dandy if she’d never met him. It was the royal flush of protective motherhood.

‘Did you do the whole black thing?’

‘No, I didn’t do the whole black thing.’

‘Call yourself a fucking friend?’

‘Yeah.’ Halo shrugged defensively. ‘I do.’

45

IT TOOK TOM three days to clean Lucia’s place up properly and to replace what was broken. Now and then he’d start to choke and have to cough muck into his hand until he could breathe again. It was gross, and he was glad Lucia wasn’t there to see it.

He’d left her in the hospital. He’d stuck around Lexington for a few days, hung around the hallway where her room was, watched from behind Quilting Quarterly and the Weekly World News as they transferred her from the chamber to a recovery ward. The whole time, her mother never left her side.

Finally frustrated, Tom had caught a cab to the airport, where one runway was still cordoned off. He’d run into Mike Carling, who was there investigating the crash and seemed genuinely pleased to see him. They shook hands, then Carling hugged him briefly and Tom wasn’t even embarrassed. The last time they’d seen each other, it had been over the body of Lenny Munro; both of them apparently felt good that Tom, at least, was still alive.

Carling had been told all Pete LaBello knew, but still pumped Tom for more information as he waited for his flight, jotting down notes in a little black book that made Tom think wistfully of Sergeant Konrad, Lemon and Harold Robbins.

He’d been allocated a seat ten rows from the exit over the wings. For the first time ever, he didn’t care. If the plane crashed now, he’d know that God not only existed, but also wanted him dead real bad.

He left Kentucky without ever laying eyes on a horse.

At LAX he’d paid a hundred and seventy-five dollars in parking fines and then found the Buick wouldn’t start so he’d called Halo for a jump. Halo had come over from Hangar Five and they’d had a cup of coffee before going out to start the car.

When Halo admitted he’d been ripped off by his decorator and was having to do everything himself, Tom had managed not to say, ‘I told you so.’

Finally, Tom had driven straight to Santa Ana and thrown himself on the mercy of Lucia’s landlady, who was suspicious and hostile until he peeled next month’s rent in cash from the fast-diminishing wad of his eleven-thousand-dollar winnings. It didn’t matter. From next month he’d be back at work on full pay.

*

Every day he worked to put the apartment right. And at night he curled up in Lucia’s bed and thought about her.

Twice he called the hospital and managed to get a condition report. She was improving. That was all they would tell him. The third time he called, an officious woman said condition reports on that patient were no longer being released, at the family’s request. Tom was torn between petulant anger and grudging admiration for Mrs Holmes, who was apparently covering all her bases when it came to keeping him from scoring.

He had no doubt that she would take Lucia back to Savannah with her when she was finally discharged and would try to keep her there permanently.

But he also had no doubt that Lucia would come here eventually, even if it was just to pick up her stuff. She had photos here, clothes, keepsakes. A yearbook that showed she’d been voted Most Likely to Succeed in her graduating class. Most Likely to Get Screwed Around by Some Selfish Jerk and Almost Die in a Plane Crash apparently wasn’t a category.

Pete had told him to take a month off before reporting back to planes. Only his need to put things right with Lucia kept Tom from defying his boss by reporting for duty the day after he left UKMed.

He didn’t miss much. Avia Freight had already tagged six fan discs they had in stock from batch 501. They then moved heaven and earth to accelerate Jan Ryland’s records search, which led quickly to the grounding of ten more 737s – thankfully before any of them suffered a failure. The records showed that Flight 823 out of Savannah had had a 501 disc installed, and Lenny Munro’s final case was closed.

The NTSB jurisdiction ended there.

Now the Feds were all over the case like a rash.

Ten days after Tom had left Kentucky, two agents knocked on Lucia’s door, their badges at the ready, and grilled him about how he fitted into the case.

He told them everything he could about fake parts, Rickard Stanley, the Weasel, and the Pride of Maine, and precisely nothing about his alternative career at the tables. They didn’t mention Ness’s name, so he figured not mentioning it to them was hardly withholding evidence in a federal case. Although it was, of course, which he tried hard not to think about.

He wondered what they were getting from Stanley, but they wouldn’t say, which Tom thought was unduly proprietorial, considering they wouldn’t even have had a case without him, and that he’d been the arresting agent.

They finally told him the Weasel had been arrested, although they called him Robert Best, and he read between their lines that Stanley was talking and that, somewhere, players much higher up the food chain were being lined up like ducks in a shooting gallery. He could guess at the turmoil as they started to suspect they were in the firing line, that he was still alive; that Stanley might turn traitor.

Tom suppressed the bristling anger at the thought that he was being brushed off. And as the two Feds talked about confidentiality and ongoing investigations, he focused past them and on Lucia’s apartment. Each item was something she’d chosen; she was in every part of the modest space, from the renewed John Lennon print to the childlike collection of glass horses on the art-deco bureau. Several had been smashed by whoever had turned her place over, but Tom had found some unbroken, and fixed others with clear glue, and the collection was almost complete again. While he’d bent over the delicate little ornaments, Tom had grinned to find himself caring so much for something so stupid, just because someone he cared for cared for them.

Now, he realized the Feds had stopped and were waiting for his response to being cut out of the loop. With surprise, he found he didn’t much care to be in this particular loop any more. They would arrest some people and pat each other on the back.

And a year from now, another batch in another factory run by another gang would roll off an illicit production line with another fatal flaw …

So, by way of an answer, Tom just shrugged at them.

Finally he’d found something worth zipping his lip for.

*

Apart from shopping and repairing stuff, Tom just hung around the apartment.

But Lucia didn’t come.

Finally restless after three weeks, Tom started going to the Rubstick most days. He lost some but won more, and knew he was a better player now than he’d ever been.

One night he saw Corey Clump. They bought each other a beer and Corey told him the kid with the shades and the iPod had turned up murdered. Said talk around the clubs was that it was over a girl. Tom nodded in tacit agreement, and got a little jag of nostalgia for a time when cards were just fun for him and held no overtones of life and death.

‘Yeah, women!’ Corey pronounced, in a long-suffering tone, although Tom had never seen him with one. ‘Can’t live with ’em, can’t shoot ’em.’

Tom forced a smile and clinked glasses with him, and wondered whether Ness Franklin was dead.

*

Three nights later he got his answer. He’d just thrown down pocket sixes in the face of a flush when a soft hand touched the back of his neck.

His heart almost stopped and he spun to face her, half expecting to be met with the barrel of a gun.

Even now, she looked good to him.

She smiled at him a little sadly. ‘Tom.’